90.8% of 6.4 million agent payments were below one cent

A report from BeInCrypto Intelligence, made with four partners, looked at 6.4 million x402 payments in 35 days. The x402 standard lets software send money online. Only $119,947 changed hands, and 90.8% of the sampled payments were below one cent. The report says that humans control most money decisions. The report has the title The State of AI Agent Payments 2026.

What the report looks at

The report looks at payments that were made and at 19 AI finance tools. Most payments were for API access, computing resources or data requests from software.

The numbers

On a test of 100 points, micropayments had a score of 60.7. Institutional money workflows had a score of 12.0. Most tools operated in limits that were set before. The report records incidents in which a total of $281,200 went to attacker wallets before recoveries.

What is not known

It is not known if companies will trust agents with large sums. Three industry leaders have different answers:

• One wants more protection of wallet keys.
• One wants a new financial system.
• One says that an agent can obey each limit and send money to the incorrect party.

Insight: Payment counts are high but the value is small

RippleX says that agent payments are about 25% of the work on the XRP Ledger, and Base counts 138 million agent payments. This report finds $119,947 in 35 days. Citigroup does not let external agents use customer accounts. This reads as a divide: networks that get value from counts show them, but banks hold the money. Measure agent adoption by value, not by count.